


A Stomp Through A Storm Is What I'd Advise

by onethingconstant



Series: Wolves and Women [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Big Brother Bucky Barnes, Bucky doesn't understand Missouri, Discussions of Underage, Gamora is not okay, Gen, I haven't even seen it yet, No Endgame Spoilers, No actual underage happens, Not Avengers:Endgame compliant, One last fic before I see Endgame, Or ever happened, bucky helps, but it's a misunderstanding, mentions of abuse, spoiler free
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-08 11:57:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18622843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onethingconstant/pseuds/onethingconstant
Summary: In the Soul World, Bucky goes looking for a missing person and finds a kindred spirit.A small, angry one.Well, it won't be the first time.





	A Stomp Through A Storm Is What I'd Advise

**Author's Note:**

> Still working on that Peggy Fixes Everything epic, which will probably lightly adapt Endgame (which I haven't seen yet). Have a little check-in with the Soul World. #BuckyBefriendsEveryone2K19

It was raining in the Soul World, warm and smelling of flowers. The rain dripped from broad-leaved alien trees and puddled in black soil, glittering with reflected saffron light. Everything in the Soul World was golden, like the hour when the day changed from afternoon to dusk. Bucky remembered Steve calling it _magic hour_ , and swiping furiously at his easel with paintbrush and pastels in a race against time, trying to capture the fleeting light. 

_He'd like it here_ , Bucky thought. _Except there's nobody to fight._

Bucky Barnes walked through the rain of the Soul World, streaming with the scent of rosewater and singing softly to himself. 

_A stomp through a storm is what I'd advise,_  
When people you trust tell nothing but lies,  
And kidnap your friend and gouge out his eyes--  
It's nice to take a walk in the rain. 

It was a pretty grim song for such a swell place. But he'd missed singing, and it was the only song he could remember about rain. He'd learned it in Wakanda, when Shuri had sat him down and made him watch a strange Canadian TV show about Shakespeare. The show had songs with lines like _Cheer up, Hamlet!_ , and they made Bucky giggle. He had vague memories of reading Shakespeare in school, Before, and it was nice to see people enjoying those stories without taking them so seriously. 

Shakespeare was surprisingly good training for his life. It was probably all the blood and ridiculousness. 

Bucky kicked a puddle, hopped over a root, and kept singing. 

_Your senior daughters are evil plotters_  
A pitter-patter shower will keep you sane  
When all has been said and all have been slain— 

He ducked as an alien bird exploded out of a bush, squawking angrily. It didn't bother him. He kept singing. 

_It's nice to take a walk in the rain (for several hours)_  
Helps to have a howl in the rain (without your clothes on)  
It's nice to take a walk in the raaaaiiiiin 

He did a little twirl as he got to the top of the rise. Combat boots weren't really great footwear for dancing, but he made do with what he had. Plus, it established him firmly as non-threatening, or at least not trying to sneak up on anybody. He'd heard rumors about his target, and he _really_ didn't want this mission to end in a fight. 

_For once._

Bucky liked the Soul World. Not enough to stay there forever, although it was looking more and more like he wasn't going to have a choice on that, but better than almost anywhere except Wakanda. It was warm, and pleasant-smelling, and quiet. The people were all right, except for everybody being dead. And the good part about everybody being dead was that nobody expected him to kill anything. 

It was practically a vacation. 

Over the rise, the ground sloped down to a ditch that was more of a stream at this point, then up slightly to a cluster of black boulders that made a hunchbacked silhouette against the golden sky. Bucky sighed internally. Nothing like an uphill approach to make things unnecessarily difficult. 

He thought about calling out, decided against it. He didn't want his target to be surprised, but he didn't want to announce himself, either. He started down the slope, still singing to himself, starting the song over. 

_When life takes its toll, and fate treats you bad...  
You used to be king, but now you've been had ..._

A puff of dirt burst up at his feet.

Bucky stopped. 

There were guns in the Soul World, but they didn't work. He'd taken his rifle out to teach Parker some basic gun safety (and self-preservation—Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Howard Stark's negligent parenting style was apparently genetic), and the first time he'd pulled the trigger on the row of rocks he'd set up on a log, nothing had happened. 

So whatever had just happened, it definitely _hadn't_ been somebody shooting into the earth in front of him with a silenced weapon. 

Unless other people in this world got different rules. 

Which would be just his luck.

Bucky threw back his head and called, “This isn't really necessary, you know!”

Another puff of dirt. Bucky flinched, but as he stepped back, he saw something bouncing out of the fresh divot in the earth. He dropped to one knee and caught it in midair.

It was a pebble. Round, smooth, black as the boulders, slightly flattened. It would have made a good little skipping stone. 

Another pebble hit the dirt beside him with a _whap_ noise. 

Bucky stood up. “I'm just here to talk!” he called. 

_Whap. Whap. Whap._ Pebbles slapped down all around him. Nice aim.

Bucky sighed deeply. He really hated this, but anybody who could throw pebbles at fastball speed with this kind of accuracy could definitely put one through his head. Could people die in the Soul World? He wasn't really sure, but he definitely didn't want to find out. 

Time to break out the big guns.

“Knock it off, wouldja?” he yelled. “Quill sent me!”

The rain of stones stopped. 

Bucky muttered to himself, slouched down the hill like the infantryman he'd been once upon a time, and slowly climbed the hill toward the outcrop. He got to the base of the first boulder when he heard:

“Tell him to flark off!”

Bucky paused. He looked around in case the landscape was going to offer him an explanation on that one. The plants and rocks stared back at him, the terrain equivalent of a shrug. He turned back to the outcrop.

“I don't know what that means!” he yelled upward. 

A stream of words followed. He didn't recognize a single one of them, but he was pretty sure of what all of them meant. 

Bucky sighed and pulled himself up the nearest boulder. 

It took a few minutes for him to clamber to the top. No flying pebbles tried to take his head off while he did it, though, so that was promising. His vibranium arm hummed happily to itself as he climbed hand-over-hand, seemingly pleased that he was _doing_ something with it at last. It was almost like having Shuri around. 

He missed Shuri. He was glad she wasn't dead, but he missed having a little sister. From the way T'Challa kept staring into space and occasionally weeping, Bucky got the sense he wasn't alone in the feeling.

Finally, he slung his metal hand over the top of the last boulder, locked his fingers into a crevice, and dragged himself over the top. 

Then he blinked.

“Jesus, Mary and _Joseph_ ,” he said. “I'm gonna kill Quill.” 

She was sitting in a crevice where the rain couldn't reach her, her knees pulled up in front of her, a little pile of pebbles sitting by her hip. She glared at him with eyes that were almost as green as her skin. 

She also had her hair pulled up in two thick curling pigtails, and looked to be about seven years old. 

“Uh, hi,” said Bucky.

“Flark off,” she said. 

“Gamora, right?” He squatted on the boulder in front of her. “I still dunno what that means, kiddo.” 

She glowered.

“Okay,” he conceded. “I have a pretty good idea. I'm Bucky Barnes.” He held out his flesh hand for her to shake. “You've probably never heard of me, but if you have, I'm real sorry.” 

The little girl didn't move. 

“Right. Okay.” He dropped his hand. “You wanna talk about it?”

“Go _away_ ,” she growled. 

Bucky shook his head. “Sorry, hon. I'm pretty much an asshole, but I'm not gonna leave a kid by herself. 'Specially when I just found out somebody's been hurting her. I dunno if I can _actually_ kill somebody in this place,” he felt the scowl creeping over his face, “but I can sure make 'em wish I could. Quill won't touch you again, I promise.”

She stared at him. “What are you _talking_ about? What's _Peter_ got to do with anything?”

_Shit_ , Bucky thought. He should've brought Wilson along. Somebody with psych training, at least.

“I don't know how things work on your planet,” he said slowly, “but where me an' Quill come from, kids are sorta...off limits. Romantically.” He frowned. “Though I guess he's from Missouri, and I heard they're kinda weird there.” 

Gamora's eyebrows were slowly creeping toward her hairline. 

“Am I missing something here?” Bucky asked desperately. “Because Quill's been walking around our camp, telling everybody who'll listen how you're his best girl and he's in love with you and your dad's a bastard.” He tilted his head to one side. “I don't think he's wrong about that last part, considering.” 

Gamora's face clouded over so fast Bucky leaned back on reflex.

“Thanos,” she snarled, “is _not_ my father.” 

Bucky dropped down to sit on his ass. Hell if he was going to be a gargoyle for this entire conversation. “You mind explaining?” he asked tiredly. 

Gamora huffed at him.

Bucky waited. 

“You're worse than Peter,” she spat. 

“I'm worse than everybody,” Bucky replied. “Just ask my sisters.” 

Something in that softened her, and she shook her head slowly. “Thanos stole me,” she said. “He killed my mother and half the people on my world, and he _stole_ me and tortured me and built me into a weapon. _His_ weapon. And I _finally_ broke free of him, but he found me again and he took me and he traded my life for the Soul Stone. Like I always knew he would.” She growled and blew a pigtail out of her face. “I haven't been _this_ since _before_ the decades of torture and manipulation. But this is how _he_ saw me, so I'm stuck.” 

Bucky blinked. Then he blinked again. 

“Wow,” he said. “That's … oddly familiar.”

Gamora tilted her head. 

“I was stolen too.” Bucky shrugged heavily. “I was a soldier. Fell off a cliff, everybody thought I was dead. A psychotic death cult found me, cut me up, stuck a bunch of crap inside me,” he wiggled his metal fingers by way of demonstration, “and made me _their_ weapon. My friend Steve helped me break free, and I'd finally gotten a little bit of peace when this purple jackass falls out of the sky and everything goes to hell.” He gave her a wan smile. “Hear anything you recognize?” 

It was Gamora's turn to blink.

“I know what it's like,” he said softly. “They never really look at you. They just see the thing they think you are, and it's easier to just _be_ that thing. But you always know you're not, and it just feels _wrong_. Twists you up inside. Right?” 

Gamora nodded. 

“But the thing is,” he went on, “they're always a paper tiger. It's sort of like—do you have cops on your planet? Police, anything like that? Law officers?”

“The Nova Corps,” she supplied. “Thanos destroyed them.”

Bucky nodded. “Yeah. 'Cause they're not as tough as they look. Cops never are. When I was a kid, we had beat cops. Big Irish guys who'd walk around your neighborhood with a stick. _Just_ a stick. I used to look up to 'em as a kid, but then I got a little older and I thought, _They must be so goddamn scared all the time_. Y'see, they're outnumbered wherever they go. Everybody looks at the stick and nobody thinks about how it's just one guy holding it. The neighborhood was full of people who hated cops—the Irish mob, Cosa Nostra, Jewish mob, everybody. And the only reason we had cops at all was nobody thought about how that one guy with a stick was just _one guy with a stick_. Purple assholes are the same way.”

“Thanos makes his own rules,” Gamora said quietly.

“I'm sure he does,” Bucky said, and rolled his eyes. “Assholes generally do. But my point is, the people trying to make you a thing? They're _always_ less powerful than whoever they're trying to break. They're just hoping you won't figure it out.” 

“Why are you telling me this?” 

Bucky looked down at his knees for a moment, then back up at the little girl in front of him. “Because I had sisters,” he said finally. “Loved 'em like crazy. And it used to drive me up the wall that everybody told 'em they couldn't do anything because they were girls, or weren't worth two bits if they weren't pretty. Which they _were_ , don't get me wrong, pretty as anything. But I hated it. I hated seeing 'em get lied to. They all figured out the game eventually, but it pissed me off no end that they had to figure something out in the first place. It made me nuts that they couldn't see what I saw when I looked at 'em. And it's the same way with you.”

“What do you see?” Gamora asked. 

Bucky smiled. “I see the woman everybody in camp is scared of, except the ones who're worried. I see somebody who survived all that crap, and made it out so strong and so smart that she can figure out complicated magical bullshit without having a wizard to talk to. I see somebody who worked out how to repel an invading force with a handful of pebbles.” He took a breath. “And I see somebody who thinks she's protecting her friends by avoiding them. I know a thing or two about that one, too.” 

Gamora stared at him, and it took him a moment to realize something was different about her face. 

Then he got it. 

“Oh, hey,” he said. “Take a look.”

She glanced down at herself, and a shiver ran through her body. Her longer, leaner body, now covered in Ravager leather, her hair loose around her face. 

“What did you do?” she asked. 

“Something I learned in Wakanda,” Bucky said. “Figured it helped me, it might help you, too.” 

“What's a Wakanda?”

Bucky stood up and held out his metal hand. “Come back with me,” he said, “and I'll tell you all about it.”

Gamora only hesitated for a moment before wrapping her fingers around his. 

“You're soaked,” she pointed out. 

Bucky felt his face split into a grin. “It's nice to take a walk in the rain.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The “strange Canadian TV show about Shakespeare” is _Slings & Arrows_, which I love beyond reason and which has the best theme song(s) ever, _fight me_. The song Bucky is singing is the _King Lear_ -inspired Season 3 theme, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/bwWDNFG7eQU . Why did Shuri make Bucky watch _Slings & Arrows_? Probably because she sees something of Bucky in Geoffrey Tennant. (Or because it's funny.) 
> 
> 2\. Peggy Fixes Everything is still coming. I have .... plans.


End file.
